hout it they cannot obtain effective
recognition, and in the existing ferment of public opinion recognition
has become more important to them than regulation is dangerous.

Many important financiers and corporation lawyers are still bitterly
opposed to any effective centralized regulation, even if accompanied by
recognition; but such opposition is not merely inaccessible to the
lessons of experience, but is blinded by theoretical prejudice.
Doubtless the position of being, on the one hand, inefficiently
regulated by the state governments, and, on the other hand, of being
efficiently protected in all their essential rights by the Federal
courts--doubtless such a situation seems very attractive to men who
need a very free hand for the accomplishment of their business purposes;
but they should be able to understand that it would necessarily produce
endless friction. The states may well submit to the constant extension
of a protecting arm to corporations by the Federal courts, provided the
central government is accomplishing more efficiently than can any
combination of state governments the amount of supervision demanded by
the public interest. But if the Federal courts are to be constantly
invoked, in order to thwart the will of state legislatures and
commissions, and if at the same time the authority which protects either
neglects or is unable effectively to supervise, there is bound to be a
revival of anti-Federal feeling in its most dangerous form. Whatever the
corporations may suffer from the efficient exercise of Federal
regulative powers, they have far more to fear from the action of the
state governments--provided such action proceeds from an irresponsible
local radicalism embittered by being thwarted. The public opinion on
which the corporations must depend for fair treatment is national rather
than local; and just in as far as they can be made subject to exclusive
centralized jurisdiction, just to that extent is there a good chance of
their gradual incorporation into a nationalized economic and legal
system.

The control of the central government over commerce and the corporations
should consequently be substituted for the control of the states rather
than added thereto; and this action should be taken not in order to
enfeeble American local governments, but to invigorate them. The
enjoyment by any public authority of a function which it cannot
efficiently perform is always a source of weakness rather than of
st